EVERY DAY IS FRIDAY

The other day I was having a conversation with my sister when we got around to talking about how fast time goes these days especially as we get older. She reminded me that our Mom, as she was growing older (and was almost 97 when she died) used to say that “Every day is Friday” because, for her, it seemed that she just put out the garbage yesterday. I can relate even if every day is not Friday. But it comes close!

Our conversation to that point was centered around my relating about my doing some supply work in two parishes back in West Virginia, one of which I had served forty years ago. The Senior Warden of Olde St. John’s had contacted me about doing some supply work as their priest had just retired and they needed someone to celebrate the Eucharist until the Bishop could help them find a permanent replacement.

When Lori, the Senior Warden, called me, she introduced herself and told me that she was 12 when saw each other last and she was now 48 with grown children. When I went to celebrate, the lay reader was a young man, now in his late thirties, whom I had baptized and was now married with two little ones of his own. My acolyte at Christ Church that Sunday was the son of an acolyte who was an acolyte for me back then.

To say that times flies and that it seems to fly faster as we grow older is obvious but it is also the truth. And we cannot slow it down. Our youngest and her husband are going to Hawaii for a belated honeymoon and Arlena and I will have the privilege to baby sit Carter who is 13 months old. A friend of Arlena’s promised to pray for the kids while they were in Hawaii. Arlena told her to pray for us instead. We’ll need it just to keep up with the little guy.

The honeymoon will give them lasting memories as will our time with Carter as have been mine while reconnecting with old-now-much-older former parishioners. As much as the kids have wanted to hurry time the last three or four months, they could not. As much as my peers and I want to slow down those seemingly-endless-it’s-Friday agains, we cannot, nor should we want to.

What we can do and what we are doing is reveling in the memories, giving thanks for them and even having some degree of pride. My old parishioners think I hung the moon and it was wonderful being told that they still remember me and still miss me. That is humbling and rewarding for which I can only give thanks to God that I must have said and done something right even though I know I messed up one many occasions.

What was even more rewarding was seeing Matthew and his family in church and him reading the lessons and having another Matthew carry the processional cross down the aisle as I followed. The Fridays will come even faster as I age but the memories will give joy and pleasure to the days even as they fly by.

THE MINISTRY OF PRESENCE

There are times in our lives when we are at a loss for words. Even more, when words do come forth from our lips, they always seem trite, inadequate, even, at least to us, foolish. But we open our mouths because we think we have to say something. Why we think that way and why we go against common sense and just keep quiet is something we brood about later. We wonder why we – or somebody – didn’t give us a good swift kick in the rear and say “just shut up.”

Just shut up and do all we can do. And all we can do when words, any words, will be inadequate is simply be there, be present. The truth is that is all the person we are trying to comfort or help with our words really needs. Words only make the situation worse, again, because they will never make it better. Our words can’t take away the grief, the pain, the suffering the one we want to comfort is going through. They are only a reminder, once again, that the suffering and pain are real.

We understand. For when we have been the one others have tried to comfort and console with their words, what we wanted and needed at that moment in our lives was for someone to simply be there with us. They could not take away our pain, could not heal the disease or raise the departed loved one. They could only do what they could do and what we wanted them to do and that was be there, hold our hand and say nothing.

It is a ministry of presence. It sounds simple. Just be there, say nothing, hold hands. We know it is not. In fact, if the truth were told, we do not want to engage in that ministry because to do so is to enter into the pain of the one we are trying to comfort and we really, honestly, do not want to do that. Not at all. No one does.

But we must. We are not meant to go it alone in this life. We need others to be with us in good times and in bad, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health. Sickness, sorrow and sadness are never, ever pleasant; but they are realities of life that escape no one. We cannot avoid them and we cannot run from them as much as we try. They catch up to us sooner or later, all of us, no exception. And when they do, what we want and need is for others to be present with us to walk with us. No words are needed; just our presence.

The ministry of presence is truly a ministry. We must never forget or underestimate the value and importance of being present to another in that person’s time of need. Many times in our lives that ministry takes place in absence. It takes place when all we can do is pray for the one we love or when the one we love prays for us. Those words of prayer are words of support, asking God to be with the one in pain because we cannot be there for the other or the other cannot be there for us.

The ministry of presence is a vocation to which each of us is called. When the call is made to be present, God will give us whatever grace and strength we need to fulfill it.

BE DOERS OF THE WORD

The church building in which I was raised was built from the salvaged parts of the old Mellon Mansion and the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Pittsburgh. It is a magnificent structure: red Michigan sandstone, marble walls and floors and communion rails, silver doors – the list is long. High on the left wall is a marble edifice that looks like a pulpit. It was even used as such on one or two occasion in my youth. Above the pulpit inscribed on the wall were the words from the Epistle of James: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only”

Simple advice both to preacher and parishioner alike, but for different reasons. As one sitting in the pew and listening to the word proclaimed from on high, really on high when proclaimed from that pulpit, and especially proclaimed in a powerful and moving sermon, the response by the parishioner expected from the preacher was/is “So what are you going to do about it?”

It’s not enough for the hearer to say after church, “Great sermon, Father,” and then go blithely on one’s way with no further personal response. The words preached and heard, no matter how profound and meaningful, will have no meaning if they are not put into action by the hearer. We must be a doer of the word we have heard, otherwise the word has no real meaning.

On the other hand, as far as the preacher is concerned, my being one, my responsibility is to preach a sermon that is meaningful to the people sitting in the pew looking up to me. The fact that they are looking up is a constant reminder that they are giving me the responsibility to speak words to them that will help them go forth from the service to live out in their lives the message and lesson that I have gleaned from the readings.

But there is more to preaching than that. I have always believed that the first person my sermon should address is the one I see in the mirror every morning. I am no different, no better and hopefully no worse, than the people I preach to from that pulpit. It is not enough for me to give them good advice, if you will, or even give myself good advice. I, like they, must live out that advice, be a doer of those words, in my daily life.

Good sermons and good advice are a start. Living out the words preached and heard must follow. The failure of the church as a whole and we preachers and hearers individually to live out the words we have preached and heard is the reason why the world is in the mess that it is in today. We have failed to take the Good News, the Gospel, we hear to heart and then to practice that good news in our daily lives. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the Good News still speaks to us today. Every day we have the opportunity to be a doer of the word by living out the word so that others hear it by our loving deeds and respond by doing the same and making the world better.

WHY IT IS NEVER ENOUGH

There are times when we’ve all had enough: enough of the politics, enough of the killings, enough of Donald, enough of whatever it is that is currently almost driving us up the wall. We’ve had more than we need and more than we can take. Those of us who are old enough to remember when politics was civil, mostly; when hunters were the only ones who had guns, mostly; and when the newsmakers, well, let’s leave it at that – we long for the good old days. We’ve had enough!

Unfortunately those days are passed and in the past. But there is much in our personal lives when we think we’re completely satisfied with our lives. “I couldn’t be any happier than I am right now,” we say with a smile on our face and contentment in our heart. But that’s really not true. Happiness is relative. We can always be happier even as happy as we are at that moment.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” we exult as we revel in the moment. Well, of course it does no matter how wonderful and exciting and fulfilling the moment is. It can always get better and it often does. That does not diminish or negate this moment in time. It is only to say that life can get better than it now is, that we can be happier than we are in the here and now.

What it also says is that in this life we never have enough. I don’t mean that in a greedy, selfish way. The truth is that most of us have more than enough worldly goods at least as far as most of the rest of the world is concerned. What I do mean is that anything that gives us pleasure and happiness always falls short. It is never enough because it can never be enough.

In this life we are given just a glimpse of what real happiness, true pleasure really is. That’s the way God intended it to be. That is why the happiness and joy and pleasure we find in this life, as good and as great as it is, can never be enough. Something in us desires more, whether we are even aware of this desire or not.

In fact, thankfully, sometimes we do become aware of the failings of the pleasures of this life. That piece of chocolate cake that looked so mouth-watering did not turn out to be as good as we thought it would be. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t delicious. It does mean that it could have been better – as with everything and everyone in this life.

St. Augustine’s observation that our hearts are restless until they rest in God only proves the point. We believe that God created us to seek happiness and pleasure in this life but in the pursuit of such discover that what we find is never enough. We want more. We need more and believe that that more will come, not in this life but only in the life to come when we are with God forever.

We will never have enough joy, happiness, pleasure in this life but we are thankful for what we have. But we also know that something more, something better, something eternal awaits us. Knowing that is enough.